NASCAR Clash breaks the ‘fine line between entertainment and racing’

NASCAR racing star and team co-owner Denny Hamlin said Sunday’s “crazy” racing in NASCAR Clash at the Los Angeles Coliseum was marginal as far as sporting spectacle goes.

In this week’s first episode of his new podcast, detrimental conduct against danny hamlinwho questioned the wisdom of running so many cars on the makeshift short track that has been behind the non-championship NASCAR Cup Series for the past two seasons.

The stadium was the site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games and usually hosts college football games, football games and concerts. For the second consecutive season, NASCAR Bud Light Clash takes place on the brand new ¼ mile oval asphalt track.

The 150-lap main event ended with 16 warnings, all but one involving at least two cars.his former teammate Kyle Busch calls the game a ‘disaster’ With “everyone’s disrespect for driving each other,” Hamlin agrees with his new podcast.

“The game was crazy,” Hamlin said. “It’s a very different race when you’re running up front versus when you’re running behind. Once I got back in there, it was terrible. It’s the worst race, it’s not even a real race, you’re just playing Hit the car in front of you.

“It only takes one person, two rows back, to get mad at someone, and they’ll drive in and blatantly kill that person, but if that person doesn’t turn, the car in front does.

“I looked around after the game and I didn’t know who to be mad at. Everyone was taken away – no one was fighting! You don’t even know who’s responsible for whom.”

NASCAR has fielded 27 cars at this year’s event, four more than the opening race in 2022, which Hamlin believes is too much for the narrow constraints and has ruled out future full-points races at the track. any discussion.

“We’re now drawing a line between entertainment and racing in The Clash,” he said. “Is this going to play in the regular season points game? I agree. [Joey] Logano; you can’t put 36 cars on that track, it’s impossible.

“I think you better race on that track, keep it conflicted, and stop inviting everyone to the party. If you win pole, like [they] In the past, you would join The Clash, and if you didn’t join, you wouldn’t show up.

“We saw in the heats and last chance qualifiers that we didn’t have those crazy problems because we only had 10 cars per game. Spread us out and it might not provide boxing entertainment, but I wonder about the juice Is it still worth squeezing in on this thing.”

Hamlin does applaud NASCAR’s publicity efforts and pre-race and in-race musical performances by award-winning recording artists Cypress Hill and Wiz Khalifa, and believes it’s achieving its goal of reaching new demographics.

“The concert and everything I heard was amazing,” he added. “The crowd started coming in, and you could tell it was a new crowd, I think 40 percent new fans, so I think it was accomplishing a lot of what NASCAR wanted it to achieve.

“Honestly, I think we’re headed in a good direction, but we’ve got to play it safe to get to … [a] Demolition derby. “